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Archive 2013 · Can Mac and PC work together?

  
 
smcphotos
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Can Mac and PC work together?


In considering adding a laptop to my workflow and currently have an iMac and thunderbolt hazard drives.

There seems to be a price point and upgradability draw to getting a PC laptop but I'm not sure how my lightroom libraries an hard drives would function across platforms.

Any thoughts or advice from anyone who uses both in conjunction in their workflow?



Dec 11, 2013 at 04:33 PM
W.T. Jones
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Can Mac and PC work together?


I think the best thing would be to Use a Macbook, it would certainly be easier to sync up the field work with the main library.

Having said that, have a PC based imaging set up & A macbook Pro I use on trips (I like the Macbook laptops better). It is not the best set up, but I can let the two talk to each other through a File server or I also run Parallels on my Macbook & have a Lacie Rugged drive that somehow the two combined can take my Mac based files & somehow share them with a PC via the rugged drive. I am not quite sure how it all works. You would be just the opposite & I have no idea if you can do it or not.



Dec 11, 2013 at 04:53 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Can Mac and PC work together?


As far as lightroom goes yes you can work easily on Mac and PC . The LRcat file works on both without issue .

I have an imac at home and use windows laptops at work . I take my Lrcat file and my smart previews file with me on a memory stick and i can work away without issue .

there is also no issue with a cat created in the field and then imported into your main LR cat at home on a different platform.

Obviously if you are using image drives that are formatted for mac or PC and you try and use them on the other platform you can run into issues (i think there are applications that can get around this anayway). so you may want to consider a format that both systems like

of course as pointed out its nicer to have a single OS system but the macbooks are not cheap .
you do get more value from a win laptop (in general) . but then theres alway 'hackintosh' should you really not get along with Win



Dec 11, 2013 at 05:10 PM
CbJohn
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Can Mac and PC work together?


not sure what the issue is? I use a MacBook Pro laptop and a PC desk machine, carry a 2TB external hard drive formatted in FAT32 (files size limit of 4GB). Both the Apple and PC read it fine, lightroom, photoshop works fine. I have a USB 3.0 port for both machines. While in the field, the laptop uses lightroom to capture the images, and process some of them. When I arrive home I plug in the external drive into the PC and it works fine to finish the images, adjust the images I started first, and call it a day. I have back up software to always have a copy of the 2TB drive in case anything happens to it.
John



Dec 12, 2013 at 01:58 AM
Dave_EP
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Can Mac and PC work together?


CbJohn wrote:
not sure what the issue is? I use a MacBook Pro laptop and a PC desk machine, carry a 2TB external hard drive formatted in FAT32 (files size limit of 4GB).
John


If you format it to ExFAT then both windows and osx can read/write it and there is no 4GB limit. we do this all the time.



Dec 12, 2013 at 07:04 AM
Mr Joe
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Can Mac and PC work together?


Running 2 OS systems will make your brain hurt. One OS means a simpler setup, faster workflow, and less chance of mistakes. Plus you can use your iMac as a second monitor with your laptop. Last year's models are often on sale at B&H.


Dec 12, 2013 at 10:37 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Can Mac and PC work together?


Chances are pretty good that the PC laptop will not have a thunderbolt port. In that case, unless the thunderbolt drives also have a USB 3 interface then you won't be able to use them.

You can buy a utility from Paragon that allows PCs to access the Mac HFS+ file system or a different one that allows a Mac to access the NTFS file system. They cost only a few dollars each.

In terms of Lr it is not a huge problem to use both systems but it pays to avoid letting two computers (even with the same OS) alter the Lr catalog and/or image library independently. i.e. be sure to use one at a time and sync the changes back to the master files before you use the other one.

In terms of other software you'll find it messy to use MS Office, for example, on both computers.

There may be some utility software that lets the PC use the iMac screen.

Some software, such as non-rental Ps, have a Windows licence or a Mac licence but not both. You can use both if you rent it. Lr can be used on both whether or not you rent it.

I recently bought an ASUS laptop with 1920*1080 15.6" anti-glare IPS screen (141ppi) and I love using it much more than I did my Mac Pro 17" 1920*1200 anti-glare non-IPS screen (131ppi). IPS gives much more stable dark colours regardless of vertical viewing angles (within reason) and that makes editing easier and more reliable. However, I'm almost at the point where the MBP has nothing to do. Fortunately my large screens are not tied to a specific computer as with an iMac. The ASUS cost me about 60% of what an rMBP would cost (both with 16GB RAM, 1TB internal SSD) and the rMBP does not have an anti-glare screen option (but at least it does have IPS).

- Alan



Dec 12, 2013 at 12:24 PM
CbJohn
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Can Mac and PC work together?


Alan321 wrote:
In terms of Lr it is not a huge problem to use both systems but it pays to avoid letting two computers (even with the same OS) alter the Lr catalog and/or image library independently. i.e. be sure to use one at a time and sync the changes back to the master files before you use the other one.

- Alan


If you keep the LR catalog and previews on the portable external drive and you have USB ports on your PC and Mac computers, Lightroom works seamlessly. The trick is to have the drive plugged into one computer at a time as you note. Format the external drive in FAT or exFat and lightroom will work the same on either computer. No synching is required if the portable drive has all the data on it. This assumes your willing to work with the speed of an external drive compared to having it on your internal or other faster drive.



Dec 12, 2013 at 01:07 PM
W.T. Jones
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Can Mac and PC work together?


Learn something new every day here, I swear.


Dec 12, 2013 at 06:28 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Can Mac and PC work together?


OK ive found out something interesting about the different file formats .

Im wanting to run my LR cat, the Smart previews and normal previews on my internal Fusion drive on the imac . but quite often I want to take those off to a Win Laptop(s) .
now uptil now I was using a 32gb Sandisk USB3 stick , and I was copying the cat file and would just produce the smart previews for the images i wanted to play with . but this was apain as it meant i had to keep generating smarts and then deleting them .
so I tried to generate loads of smarts but found the upload to the stick to take too long (often I realised i would have to leave for work before it was done).
I just assumed the stick was not as fast for 'big data' as was promised .

But I came accross a little 128gb USB3 external SSD that was nice and cheap in a used store .
great I think now i can transfer ALL the smarts and the previews to the SSD and work from that . but while its possible the transfer seemed to take for ever . the mac was telling me it would be over 3 hours for the 80odd gig of data .

this didnt seem right to me as I had sent just the cat file (just under a gig) to that drive and it took what seemd like a few seconds .
anyway I formatted the drive and started again . I started the process and went and did some other stuff . I came back after half an hour to look at some email and noticed the job was done . much better I thought . but the drive was not readable on the windows machine .
OOPS i hadnt noticed when I formatted it that I had selected 'Mac OS Extended'

OK so if Mac OS was quicker lets run a test to see how much faster it is .

I picked the Preview file only which is 25gig in size .
the external SSD was formatted before each run .

Mac OS Extended took 4min 25sec to transfer
MS-Dos Fat took 22mins
ExFat took 51min 30 sec

Like said that was just the 25gig preview file . the smart preview file is twice the size .

so does anyone know how I can make the Fat and Exfat transfers closer to the Mac OS time ?
i know you can get progs like MacDrive that allow the Win machine see and use the Mac format . but it costs per machine and i have access to lightroom on a number of laptops (work/family etc) . its an option I would consider but a cheaper (no cost would be great ) alternative great .



Dec 17, 2013 at 07:58 AM
howardm4
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Can Mac and PC work together?


well, you could try using NTFS instead.

Paragon makes, in addition to a Mac/NTFS driver, a Win/HFS+ driver so a PC can r/w HFS+. It's also part of the current MacBundle too so it's cheaper.



Dec 17, 2013 at 08:06 AM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Can Mac and PC work together?


howardm4 wrote:
well, you could try using NTFS instead.

Paragon makes, in addition to a Mac/NTFS driver, a Win/HFS+ driver so a PC can r/w HFS+. It's also part of the current MacBundle too so it's cheaper.


OK thanks for the suggestion .
I downloaded the trial of NTFS for mac but the same file transfered to the NTFS format was 23 mins .


I will try the NFS for win on my wifes win 8 machine to see if it works . but as i said thats the expensive (but looking like the best) way around .



Dec 17, 2013 at 09:16 AM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Can Mac and PC work together?


so quick update .

the Trial NFS win thing from Paragon didnt read the drive properly .

as a tempory measure I've migrated the LR cat and the previw files over to the external USB 3 ssd drive (formated Fat32) and will try and run LR from that . if things slow down too much i'll go back to the internal drive and figure out a better way . at the moment the initial tests seem like things are pretty quick so maybe thats the best option

still quite shocked at the speed difference for 'big data' between the format types though



Dec 17, 2013 at 02:09 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Can Mac and PC work together?


Another way to approach this is with a mirroring application. Most will update either file from the other as soon as a change occurs. Some can write only the file differences too so that the entire 30GB doesn't need to be transferred.

Another way, and the one I use most (although not with LR that much) is via the simple deployment of a multi-host USB3 hub. Mine is limited to two hosts and is only manually switchable. So I can connect two computers to it and with a button press switch all the devices from one machine to another. It seems to be smart enough that if only one machine is on it connects to that machine automatically and the switch (button) has no affect.




Dec 17, 2013 at 07:08 PM
Ian.Dobinson
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Can Mac and PC work together?


Bifurcator wrote:
Another way to approach this is with a mirroring application. Most will update either file from the other as soon as a change occurs. Some can write only the file differences too so that the entire 30GB doesn't need to be transferred.

this is what im looking into . so far as far as i can see everything ive looked at seems to overwrite the entire file . do you know of any that can do only the changes ?

Another way, and the one I use most (although not with LR that much) is via the simple deployment of a multi-host USB3 hub. Mine is limited to two hosts and is only manually switchable. So I can connect two computers to it and with a button press switch all the devices from one machine to another. It seems to be smart enough that if only one machine is on it connects to that machine automatically and the switch (button) has no affect.



yeah but it would need a very long usb cable, my other machines are at various locations (work etc)
handy though if your running 2 machines next to each other



Dec 18, 2013 at 02:50 AM





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